


It Just Doesn't Exist

by Thewordlover



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Endverse, Gen, Sam!Lucifer, Vessels, s05e04 The End
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-09
Updated: 2012-09-09
Packaged: 2017-11-13 21:09:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/507741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thewordlover/pseuds/Thewordlover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You don’t let the devil take control of your body. You just don’t. Sam knows that, and he said yes, voice not shaking at all, in Detroit. Like it would always be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Just Doesn't Exist

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to wordsofself and dwgeek. Their comments and words of encouragement were extremely helpful as I undertook this writing project. You guys are awesome.

He’s awake for more than snatches. Stuck up in his head, unable to control a finger, an eyelid, a cell. Sam can see out of his eyes, feel his body move, think rapid painful confused thoughts, but there is no control.  
He thought once, briefly, that he could control it. Wrench his body back from the devil. It was a fool’s hope, but he grasped at it all the same. For a whole second, Sam pulled with all his strength towards control. Nothing happened. Nothing.  
After that, there was no hope. Not really.

Now, his hands are too often warm with blood, torn flesh. The world is falling down, and Sam can’t even cry for release. He doesn’t deserve to be able to, anyway. This is all his fault.

Anyone who is or was a vessel faces the question: Why? Why do it? Why give up everything? It haunts you, come from others, yourself, the world.  _Why._

Desperation. Giving up. No Dean, not since a picnic table off a highway near River Pass, Colorado. No cavalry coming to save the day.

Just Sam, drifting across the country, pressure building. Lucifer starring in all his dreams, in his head already anyway. Let it end. Maybe something could rise from the ashes, after.

But that’s just excuses, thin explanations. You don’t let the devil take control of your body. You just don’t. Sam knows that, and he said yes, voice firm and not shaking at all, in Detroit.  
Like it would always be.  
He said yes, and he couldn’t have, because you don’t. But somehow he did, and now.

Now people are dying by the thousands, and for all Sam knows Dean is dead, and so what matters anymore, anyway?

This is the truth, the real truth about why, an explanation: there is none. It just doesn’t exist.

When he is feeling chatty (or sadistic) (or both), Lucifer will talk to Sam.. Any mirror will do, and tonight it’s cracked and bloody, hung over the sink in a gas station outside Detroit.

“You said yes just down the road, Sam,” Lucifer muses idly, almost cordial, as he picks a scab and lets the skin fall into the dirty basin. “I never got to properly thank you for that.”

“I don’t want your thanks,” Sam replies, flustered.

“Now, Sam. Your temper. Our temper.”

Sam is silent, then says, “I’m not you. I’m not you. I am your vessel.”

They stare at each other through the mirror. Sam sees himself looking back, an effect that is thoroughly disturbing and not something he will grow used to in a thousand years. The poor bastard Nick was left to rot, but Sam will always think of Lucifer- the separate being who is not him- in that form.

But now, they look the same. Their only separation a thin layer of grimy glass. The only edge, and so laughably breakable.

“Sam, Sam. I keep telling you. We belong together. Why else would you say yes?”  
Sam can barely think straight at the best of times, and now he speaks without thinking at all, words falling out into this illusion.

“My brother- no. You got me, you won. I don’t need to explain anything to you.”

“Dean. The infamous, co-dependent Winchesters. Not so close in the end, though. I got you sure, but Sam, wouldn’t it be a lot more pleasant if we could properly enjoy our time together?”  
“No,” Sam whispers, vehemently. “It wouldn’t.”

“Your loss, Sam,” Lucifer smiles, and smashes the mirror with Sam’s fist.

 

Sam plucks up his courage, asks.  
“Dean. Is he-”  
Lucifer looks at him through a hotel mirror, cleaner than most rooms of theirs have been in a while.

“Dean is alive, Sam. Has his own camp of merry apocalypse survivors.”

Sam nods slightly, relief making him weak and hazy.

The next hard question.

“So, Dean hasn’t-”

“Said yes? Too late for that. My brothers have all gone home. Lights out on the angel patrol.”

So really nothing. No back-up plan. No one to clean up his monumental mess.  
Except Dean.  
But honestly, Sam doesn’t believe in his brother’s ability to save the world anymore. Doesn’t believe in much of anything, really.

 

He screams to be let go, to fall unconscious. He would rather ride a comet like Jimmy Novak than be awake and lucid every slow second.

“Please please I beg of you,” he cries in a dingy motel one night, all pretext and pride forgotten.  
Lucifer only looks back, then, finally-  
“I need you, Sam. Not just your body. I only wish you could say the same.”

Sam’s rage and sadness and hopelessness all spill over, and a tear rolls down his- their?-cheek. Whether it is, somehow, a moment of control, or just Lucifer mocking him, Sam has no idea. It doesn’t matter.

“You know what I give you, Sam?” Lucifer says, his voice choked and broken. What an actor, that one is.

Sam is silent. There is nothing.

“I give you a purpose, a partner. I make the tough decisions, and you can rest. Look at it, Sam: You’re never alone. Finally, you have someone.”

Lies. All lies. Lucifer said he would never lie to him.

“I wasn’t alone. Before. I had Dean. Before-”

“Look how that turned out. You never really had your brother, Sam. He just used you to feel better about himself. He didn’t really care.”

“You’re wrong. We were- we were a family. I don’t need someone to decide for me-”

“But you did decide. You chose this. You said yes.”

Sam nods, falls silent. Nothing else to say. He knows. He knows all too well how true that certain statement is. Every moment out of control, every death- all on him.

The future arrives, one awful second at a time. Sam feels guilty for the self-pity, yet he can’t muster the strength to pull himself out of that hole. He’s treading water at best, and wondering why it matters. His mental state won’t fix or harm the world. All he does is enable Lucifer to destroy his species. Destroy the people Sam used to save.

Still, Sam is stubborn. If Lucifer won’t let him fall into blissful nothing, he certainly won’t give him the satisfaction of insanity. Clinging to his tiny stack of thoughts and memories is the only thing remaining. And even that is peeling away, leaving a yawning hole of frozen blackness.

Sam wishes Lucifer would hate him instead of pretending to be his ally. Torture his vessel at night for fun. Sam wants to hurt, wants something bled out of him and left behind. Be punished for what he has done. To the world. To himself. To his brother.  
He is stuck, pressed in tight and unable to scream.

 

It’s 2014 now.  
Sam watches crazed men and women killing each other in the streets of Kansas City. Lucifer observes, his unblemished white suit a bright spot in the sea of concrete and blood. He nods his approval, then walks with purpose into an old, decaying sanitorium, through the building, and out into the garden.

Sam wonders why they are standing in this abandoned place. He reaches out reluctantly to Lucifer’s mind, pressed tight against his.  
Lucifer only smiles. Sam wonders at the stretching of his slightly chapped lips.

The garden is beautiful, and desolate. Storm clouds roll in, and the building around them looms dark and empty.  
And then. Dean.

He deserves a line, a paragraph, a page.

Dean.

 

_Dean._

Here. After an eternity.

Dean stands mere feet away.  
And Sam feels no relief, or hope. No, he feels raw terror, because Dean cannot be here.

And yet, still, Sam drinks the vision of his brother in. Alive. Breathing. He wears a dark green jacket and seems hardened. His face is no longer delicate.  
But it’s Dean.  
And that is enough. That is everything to Sam.  
Dean is everything.  
Maybe he shouldn’t be. That has just made the last few years worse. Because when one person is your whole world, what else can there be after he is gone.

Memories flash through Sam’s mind as Lucifer says, “Oh. Hello, Dean,” and walks forward.

 _Motel rooms and almost empty cereal boxes. A hundred schools, few sticking much in his memory. Mr. Wyatt, though, he is there. The night of the second fire. Apple pie life over. Ava. Andy. Why couldn’t he stay dead back then. But no. There’s five thousand moments of Dean, when they got along and things were as close to right as they would ever. Once he gave up on Stanford, the Impala and Dean were home again. Home._  
Doesn’t matter now. Or can’t matter.

Sam frees himself from the past and sees Dean, there under him on the ground. Lucifer rests his foot on Dean’s neck.

Sam feels every muscle and bone tense and push down.

It is over  
 _over_  
done.

Sam’s eyes overflow, a split second of control in a wild grief he will never be able to express.  
Dean gone. No hope whatsoever.

And then another Dean is rushing up and standing there beside Lucifer (beside Sam). Sam studies this one, tries to understand.

His (Lucifer’s) foot rests on Dean’s broken neck a moment longer _(oh, the delicious symbolism)_.

And the other man, who looks exactly like Sam’s brother is right there.

“Aren't you a surprise,” Lucifer says. Dean stares at the devil. At Sam.

Then Lucifer is behind Dean.  
“ You've come a long way to see this, haven't you?”  
Sam listens carefully, struggles to understand.  
“Well, go ahead. Kill me,” Dean replies.  
“Kill you?” Lucifer says, staring down at the corpse of the first Dean. “Don't you think that would be a little...redundant?”  
Finally, Sam’s brain catches up, as a memory surfaces.  
Once, Castiel sent Dean back to Lawrence. Back to 1973. Could this Dean be a Dean of the past? How? And why?

“I'm sorry. It must be painful, speaking to me in this—shape. But it had to be your brother. It had to be.”  
I chose this, Sam thinks, almost a plea. I made this have to be. Please, forgive me. No, don’t. Hate me, Dean. I can’t bear forgiveness.

Lucifer reaches out for Dean’s shoulder. Dean pulls back.

“You don't have to be afraid of me, Dean. What do you think I'm going to do?”

“I don't know. Maybe deep-fry the planet?” Dean says.

Lucifer carefully looks over a rose from the garden. Deep red. Beautiful. Pure.

“Why? Why would I want to destroy this stunning thing? Beautiful in a trillion different ways. The last perfect handiwork of God.”

Sam cannot understand what he is feeling. It is too much all at once.

This Dean from the past says nothing.

“You ever hear the story of how I fell from grace?” Lucifer says, as if this were an ordinary conversation. Not a confrontation at the end of the world.

“Oh, good God, you're not gonna tell me a bedtime story, are you? My stomach's almost out of bile,” Dean says, and Sam wonders if this living Dean means there is some hope. How would a time loop work? Or parallel- he can’t make his brain work properly, and goes back to listening.

“You know why God cast me down? Because I loved him. More than anything. And then God created... “

Lucifer smirks. Sam wonders what ‘love’ could mean to Lucifer.

Lucifer continues, “You. The little...hairless apes. And then he asked all of us to bow down before you—to love you, more than him. And I said, ‘Father, I can't.’ I said, ‘These human beings are flawed, murderous.’ And for that, God had Michael cast me into hell. Now, tell me, does the punishment fit the crime? Especially, when I was right? Look at what six billion of you have done to this thing, and how many of you blame me for it.”

There is a short silence, and Sam wonders if Lucifer is believes a word he is saying. I don’t lie, the devil thinks, in that odd way he has of pushing sentences into Sam’s thoughts.

  
Then Dean speaks.  
“You're not fooling me, you know that? With this sympathy-for-the-devil crap. I know what you are.”

Lucifer pauses half a moment and asks, “What am I?”

 “You're the same thing, only bigger,” Dean says, his eyes filling with tears. “The same brand of cockroach I've been squashing my whole life. An ugly, evil, belly-to-the-ground, supernatural piece of crap. The only difference between them and you is the size of your ego.”

Lucifer’s lip stretch into a smile.

“I like you, Dean,” Lucifer says. “I get what the other angels see in you. Goodbye. We'll meet again soon.”

Lucifer turns, and Sam is not ready. Not ready to leave Dean. Not yet. (Not ever.)

Then the living Dean yells out, “You better kill me now!”

Lucifer turns and faces Dean again.

“Pardon?”

“You better kill me now. Or I swear, I will find a way to kill you. And I won't stop.”

“I know you won't. I know you won't say yes to Michael, either,” Lucifer says, every word so calm. “And I know you won't kill Sam. Whatever you do, you will always end up here. Whatever choices you make, whatever details you alter, we will always end up—here. I win. So, I win.”

“You're wrong,” Dean says, and Sam struggles to see his brother for these last fleeting moments.

“See you in five years, Dean.”

Sam stares out at his brother. Tries desperately to find something in his eyes. Determination. Maybe even a trace of hope. If he finds it, Sam is more than willing to cling to it for the rest of this.  
All he sees is green.

Then they are gone, pulled into the gathering storm.

 

That night they stay in a hotel on the edge of the city.  
“I am sure that was very hard for you, Sam,” Lucifer says in front of the night’s mirror. “I am sorry.”  
Sam is silent. His thoughts are back in the garden. Dean, dead on the ground. Dean, from the past and alive. Green eyes, and what else? What else. Nothing else. Not really.

“I am not you,” Sam says, finally, the words stale and thick. Then, “You’re wrong. It won’t be like this in the very end. It can’t be.”

Lucifer shakes his head slowly. The white suit still fits impeccably on the body that was once wholly Sam Winchester’s. The body that is now a battleground of wills and blood.

Quiet. Sam thinks of the thousands dying. Saying yes. He can see Dean’s green eyes, with nothing to offer him in this place he now inhabits. No hope. No one to save the world, now. Not really.

Sam stares at Lucifer in the mirror, his reflection an exact replica. I’m not you.  
 _I’m not you._

“I’ve already won, Sam,” Lucifer says softly, like he is trying to be gentle. Be kind.  
“I-,” Sam begins, then is unable to speak.

So he will have to just hold onto the green, then. Hold onto those empty eyes that are his last link to the past. That is where the hope lies. This future, this present, is death and blood and guilt. It’s freezing cold evil in all his cells.

_I would change things if I could. I would go to the past and not do what I did. The impossible thing I did. But I cannot, and I am not worthy of forgiveness._

Sam closes his eyes and says, “This is the end, Lucifer. You win. But if, if Dean could kill you, could kill me-“  
“You think Dean could kill his own brother?”  
Sam sighs.  
“He couldn’t. But if he could, that- that would be my only chance.”  
“At what?”  
“Hope. Maybe even, I don’t know... Redemption. I know I don’t deserve it, but there it is.”  
“Sam,” Lucifer says, his eyes bright. “Sam. Sometimes you’re just too pathetic for words.”  
Sam smiles, bold and defiant.  
“Believe me. I know. But it’s the truth.”

The next morning, they head out of the city. Sam is silent in the mirror that night. There is nothing left to say. They have reached a stalemate of sorts, the devil and Sam.

 

There is no cavalry coming to save the day. Just the end of the world, and a memory of the green eyes belonging to a man that once made a promise to kill the devil. A promise nobody really believes in.

But this is the choice Sam made. He said yes.

_I am not you._

Sam feels foolish holding onto these faint bits of hope, but there is nothing else to hold onto. Nothing else in the world but each painful moment, slowly passing into the next as the future arrives.


End file.
